


Need and Want

by gala_apples



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Babysitting, Friends to Lovers, M/M, One Night Stands, Post-Break Up, Post-Season/Series 02, Stiles Stilinski Has ADHD, Triadverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 05:21:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2456279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has a plan. He's going to wait until Lydia dumps Jackson and gets a new boy or girl to need before he markets himself so that they both want him. It's a long-term plan, but ultimately achievable. But as has been true since Stiles planned a nice evening locating a corpse in the woods and came out with a werewolf best friend, Stiles' plans don't work. Between pretty boys who hit on him over ice cream and best friends who have epiphanies, Stiles is going to be dating a lot sooner than five years from now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need and Want

**Author's Note:**

> This ‘verse takes some linguistic cues from ancient Norse. Most are explained throughout the fic, but a quick cheat sheet:  
> needfriend (the first boy/girlfriend)- naudizfriend  
> joyfriend (the second)- wunjofriend  
> the random hook up -dagaz  
> home(parent)- opalamom  
> work(parent of same gender as home[parent]) raidomom
> 
> Also, Ve and Vili are real Norse characters, but thier story has been altered to fit this verse.
> 
> Written for the triadverse big bang. The mix can be found [here](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ogfw0c4j32da8j2/AAD4icUEoTgb5rkkwaAUt0mLa?dl=0)

“Stiles, come get your friend!” 

It’s an unexpected order from his father, and is startling enough that Stiles jolts back in his computer chair and nearly topples backwards. He really needs to stop doing that. Sooner or later it’s going to break. He’s got a whole list of things he should buy with his odd jobs money, and he doesn’t need a hundred bucks of spinny goodness added to it.

He goes downstairs immediately, of course. New supernatural acquaintances or not, Stiles doesn’t know anyone who would crash _his_ house in need but would wait for permission to go to his bedroom. Something’s hinky.

Turns out it’s just Scott. His best friend who’s been barrelling through the Stilinski house like it’s his own since they were both seven and all of Stiles’ parents were still around. That he’s crashed out on the couch beside Stiles’ dad just makes it weirder. Scott likes his dad as much as Stiles likes Ms McCall, but they don’t make a habit of sitting on the middle cushion of a three seater next to the other’s parent when there’s a whole free loveseat. Definitely hinky.

“Hey buddy. What’s up?” He doesn’t need his dad making crazy eyes at him over Scott’s head to know there’s some sort of issue. “Why didn’t you come upstairs?” 

Scott mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “too much work.” Stiles wouldn’t swear to it in court, his eavesdropping skills are only a little over baseline human due to practice, nothing like werewolf hearing, but the scrunch of his dad’s face adds credence to his theory. And considering Scott can bench press cars, stairs shouldn’t be logged under physical labor. Which means something is wrong, loss of motivation wrong, and Scott’s been really trying this summer, with everything.

A year ago Stiles probably would have thrown himself on the third cushion, steepled his fingers, and told Scott to tell Doctor Stiles all his issues. He’s a smartass like that -it’s possible he’s got a bit of contempt for psychologists. Of _course_ he has mother issues, that doesn’t mean they have to look so giddy with a fountain pen in hand- and Scott doesn’t handle stoic suffering of pain well. But a year ago Scott’s crisis might have been about how much asthma blows, or how many dicks his father and raidomom can suck if they think he’s going to visit during spring break. Now Scott’s drama probably has to do with finally realising that declaring the Pack leader not his Alpha technically means he’s an Omega. That’s not something he can just pressure Scott to spill in front of his dad.

“Look, buddy. You wanna talk, I wanna listen. It’s a match made in heaven. But I think piggybacking you up the stairs might only make us both fall. To our deaths. Which would be embarrassing, frankly.” He can’t add a line about how after everything a muggle death would be pathetic, not with his dad watching their exchange, but Scott can probably hear it anyway.

“Fine.”

Stiles considers the one word answer his first victory. Scott isn’t particularly known for keeping back his feelings. If -when- Stiles cracks that first pane, the entire window will fall apart.

Scott doesn’t so much climb the stairs as trudge up them. Stiles isn’t leading the way, because why would Scott need him to? Scott knows every inch of his house. When they were younger and hide-n-seek got too easy from repetition, they’d hide erasers for each other to find, pink for Scott, wacky scented ones for Stiles. Rather, he’s stuck behind Scott, thinking he’d probably have time to go back to the kitchen for chips and a soda, and fuck, maybe even make his own dip by the time Scott was on the top landing.

Stiles feels marginally more equipped to handle the problem once his bedroom door is closed. In here he won’t have to censor himself, something he’s getting mighty sick of doing. One day he’s going to tell his dad everything, he really is. Now though, the goal is to just be a good bro. 

Stiles sits on the edge of his bed, automatically scootching over when Scott looks like he wants to drop beside him. If it was Stiles, he’d probably vent while pacing, but Scott doesn’t have the same need for constant movement he does. As it stands, he’ll probably pace when he’s solving the problem of how to rejoin the pack after royally pissing Derek off. A part of Stiles’ brain is already gnawing at how to go about keeping as much of Scott’s dignity as he can, while still fulfilling the requisite sucking up. He’s pretty decent at thinking through situations and poking at technicalities. Like maybe they can joyride Derek’s car before they clean and detail it.

“So you gonna spill or? I mean, I could guess. I guess I’ll figure it out if I guess long enough, but it would probably be easier if you just told me, because my imagination is a scary place.”

“Quentin,” Scott groans.

Stiles is going to need some clarification. The name basically shuts down the likelihood of this being a Derek/Alpha/betrayal-depending-on-POV/pack problem. Quentin had essentially nothing to do with that scene. He wasn’t even in the warehouse when everything went down; he’d stayed at the Hale house researching full-blown Kanimas, in case he found some last second information to save them all. Like anyone would have been in a position to answer their phone. Not that Stiles considers his own drive-directly-into-Jackson plan a stunning tactical achievement. Humans do what they can.

“Quentin what?” Stiles could fill in that sentence for himself, more than once. Just because Quentin wasn’t the cause of the Not My Alpha issue doesn’t mean there aren’t half a dozen things that he could currently be distressing Scott with. But Stiles guessed wrong the first time, so he’ll give in and wait for the real answer this time.

“He said without Allison around he no longer falls neatly on the spectrum of supernatural to muggle, that all of a sudden it’s me-”

“Wolfy,” Stiles supplies.

“And him-”

“Humany,” Stiles interrupts again.

“And that he couldn’t deal with it.”

“Being human?” Because that is a very definite Scott-Quentin-Allison issue, that Quentin sees lycanthropy as a consent issue, and only that. That as long as you ask first, it’s okay to permanently alter as many people’s lives as you want. Stiles doesn’t have to ask what Quentin would have done if Peter’d asked him at Prom. He already knows.

“And totally irrelevant to that part of my life. And I told him why not, you could-” Scott seems to realise what he’s saying and hastily corrects himself. “I meant the human thing, not the irrelevant thing! Like, that being human doesn’t mean-”

If Stiles doesn’t acknowledge him, Scott will backpedal himself right off the road. “No, I get it. So he said what?”

“That I should date you then.” Scott topples over, mattress springs creaking under him. “Stiles, this sucks. I don’t want to date you. I want my naudizfriend back. I want Quentin to be my great wunjofriend, and Allison to come back from France with her head straight. The whole point of taking a break was so that she’d see us being stable and drama free. Him breaking up with me is not drama free. I don’t even know how this happened!”

“Well, you dating him singly but not calling him your naudizfriend might have been a start.”

“But he’s not! Allison is.”

“Was, man.” Stiles knows he’s supposed to be the best friend, support Scott unilaterally, but that’s just stupid. It shows a complete lack of respect, and honestly, Quentin would be within his rights to kick Scott in the junk.

“I don’t understand.”

Stiles crab-walks back so he can lean against his headboard, talking all the while. “Come on dude, it’s not that hard to figure out. When your first naudizfriend decides to leave you-”

“Take a break-” Scott interrupts.

“Objectively speaking, leaves you, it is rude as fuck to hold that spot open and say your wunjofriend is still your wunjofriend instead of moving them up in the pack. It’s like-” Stiles struggles for another example, but only for a moment. He’s got a pretty obvious one. “It’s like continuing to call Derek a Beta because he was before he slit Peter’s throat. Hell, it’s like the snacks in a vending machine. Take the first in line out, the second in line moves into place.”

“But I couldn’t let Allison come back and things be different like that.”

Oh for fucksakes. It takes all Stiles has to not reach out and thwap Scott upside the head. “I know Allison’s important to you, but Quentin’s supposed to be too.”

Scott’s face scrunches miserably. “Come on Stiles. I already feel bad, why are you making me feel worse?”

“So you don’t do this shit again. Look, I support the Romeo and Juiletteness of a werewolf dating a hunter. I really do. But you two are destined to have an unstable relationship. You’re going to break up a hundred times before you graduate. And when it happens you can’t push your wunjofriend away, if they fall on your side. It’s shitty, and it’s stupid. Romeo and Juliet ignored Agrippa, and look at what happened to them! Quentin could have been your anchor, if you had to do wolfy stuff this summer. Now what, you’re going to go back to Derek’s ever so lovely suggestion of brutal pain?”

“I could use you?”

If the house is shaking, it’s from the seismic force caused by the epic rolling of his eyes. “Scott, you’re my brother. My brother who I dagaz with sometimes, because we’re sixteen years old and our dicks are up more often than they’re down. But it’s pretty obvious you have ridiculous fairy tale love set as your anchor, and buddy, I just can’t see you wooing me. If we somehow end up in a situation where you have to use your epic love for me or Beacon Hills explodes, you’ll have to prepare yourself to die.”

Scott grinds the palms of his hands over his eyes before settling them lower on his face. “Dude, if you make me feel any worse I think I’m going to cry.”

Well shit. Way to slide from feeling righteous to crappy in one sentence. “‘Kay, I’ll stop. I’m done. You want a hug or something?” It comes off blase, but Stiles means it, and Scott squirms until his head is on Stiles’ thigh.

“How do I fix this?” Scott asks quietly, eventually. “Do I just lie and say he’s my naudizfriend?”

“That’s one way,” Stiles agrees, to be easy on his best friend for a second. “Alternatively, you could stay broken up with him.”

“But my masterplan!”

A few months ago Stiles would have joked about master planning not being Scott’s strong suit. Then he pulled off fucking over Gerard by throwing Derek under the bus. It was a pretty sweet plan. It seems to have had the side effect of Isaac no longer trusting them, because before they were trying a video game and no talking about Pack ceasefire, and now the guy hasn’t spoken to them in a month. But Isaac’s anger vs Gerard still kicking around isn’t much of a choice in Stiles’ book.

“So new plan, new goals. Don’t plan for perfection with Quentin to lure Allison back. Make yourself perfect, lure her yourself, and get a better wunjofriend.”

“What if Allison likes him better than me?”

Stiles snorts. “I doubt it.”

“They’ve spent more time together than me and her lately.”

“Because he’s human, and it was easier to convince the Argents that she dropped you but kept him.”

Scott scowls, and Stiles doesn’t blame him. The date they went out with Matt to throw off suspicion was like the creepiest thing Stiles has ever gotten a second hand accounting of.

“Now that there are no more cameras around the school and Chris and Russell Argent are less likely to try and murder you than Grandpa, I don’t see why wolfiness matters.”

“Everything sucks. Suuuuuuuucks, Stiles. Sucks. I need to get drunk.”

Stiles finger combs Scott’s hair. He knows from the times they’ve snuggled after dagazing that Scott finds it soothing, even if he won’t admit to that. “We tried that buddy. No can do. You’re Steve Rogers post-serum, remember?”

“We’ll lace it, like Lydia did.”

“One, lets try to remember that Lydia didn’t do that, Peter did. Two, I didn’t exactly put tripping major balls in today’s agenda. Three, I didn’t particularly enjoy myself last trip. It was mostly panic attacks and crying. And four, I don’t even know where to get the poison, like actual _literal_ poison, that does it for you. It’s not a fine grade A Walmart product.”

“Okay, fine. But everything still sucks.”

Stiles settles -as much as he can- in for the long haul. He has a theory that this is going to get tedious. Maybe he can make a game out of it. A dollar from the College fund to the Stuff To Buy With A Fake ID fund transferred guilt free for every time Scott uses the word ‘sucks’. Or maybe he should just buy him a word of the day calendar. Surely there have to be synonyms in there somewhere.

***

Bedtime in the Ivory house always takes forever. Bedtime in the Ivory house occasionally leaves Stiles typing out long I Quit docs on his phone. Sure, they get deleted before the parents come home, but that doesn’t change the fact that they get written. War is hell? No. Bedtime is hell.

Vaughn and Crystal and Helene always demand separate stories. Or rather, the older two can’t fall asleep until someone talks at them for at least ten minutes, but Crystal likes cool facts, and Vaughn likes myths and fairy tales, and they both complain and wriggle until the fitted sheet nearly pulls off the mattress if they get stuck listening to the other’s brand of bedtime story. Helene, like every four year old, likes the normal rhymey wacky picture books, but Stiles knows better than to correlate that with sleep. Jet and Donny are the easiest to put down, since they’re too old to really want anything from him. On the other hand they also have the latest bedtime, and Stiles can’t really do anything for himself until all the lights are off.

When his dad first told him that Deputy Ivory -now known as Graham, because none of the Ivorys stand on much pomp and circumstance- needed a babysitter, Stiles wouldn’t have guessed that bedtime would be the worst part of the gig. To be fair to his deductive skills though, he was mainly focused on being shocked that the man needed a babysitter at all. There’s not a lot of call for babysitting in general society. The opalaparent of the family generally has things under control, and if they don’t there are still two other parents. But sometimes there are date nights, to keep the sexy, appreciative part of the relationship alive. And sometimes a family is low income and even the opalaparent has to have part time work.

In the Ivory’s case, it’s a little bit of both. Tamryn, Portia, and Graham work random shifts to cover the costs of their five kids. Portia’s probably technically the opalamom, since she spends the most time with the kids, but it’s not nearly as dedicated a role as most families have. It can’t be, not with Helene and Donny’s medical bills. Six days a week they make it work, rotate shifts so there’s always someone home. Thursday nights are for the relationship, from noon until midnight. Thursday nights are where Stiles comes in.

Graham Ivory isn’t the first deputy Stiles has helped out. In fact, his dad has a tendency to pimp him out to do various odd jobs the people at the station need done. Stiles doesn’t make a habit of refusing. He doesn’t have a regular job, but he likes owning goods and purchasing services, so a fist full of cash at the end of a task done is good.

Stiles finishes clipping the old t-shirts the kids use as messy-play smocks to the line and steps back inside. The kitchen clock is mocking him with it’s 7:20. 7:20 means it’s almost 7:30, and when it hits 7:30 he’s got a terrible job to do. Times like these Stiles wouldn’t mind living in a socialist country. He needs money, there’s no disputing that. Carting werewolves around the county -even when they have their own damn cars and can run faster than he can drive in a school zone- requires gas, and gas costs money. Having the government just give said money to him seems like the best solution. But barring the United States merging with Canada, he’ll have to get it in other ways. Such as doing his job. Goddamnit.

He goes to Vaughn’s room first, on a hunch. Vaughn’s the artist, the only one who manages to make his blobs of paint really look like anything. Stiles is of the opinion that twenty years from how he’s going to be living in a hole above a gallery, letting five different people who are all convinced they’re his naudizfriend pay for his rent and food and canvases. He’s a good enough kid, but manipulative. At six, he already knows how to barter in a way that makes the second party not realise they’ve gotten less in the bargain.

Sure enough, Helene is in there, sorting through the huge tub of Perler beads Vaughn got for his birthday. If Stiles decides to pursue this problem it’s gonna be a pain in the ass; she’s dumped half the tub onto the carpet so she can better pick out the purple beads.

“What are you doing?”

“Vaughn said if I sort all the colours he’ll make me a really big rainbow for my bedroom.”

Stiles eyeballs the tub. It’s twice the size of a pail of ice cream. He’d be willing to bet that whatever parent or relative bought it for him, they got it from a wholesale teaching supply store. It would be hours of work for himself, and Helene has less dexterity and no Adderall to help her hone in on a task.

“Nope. You’re gonna go brush your teeth and pick out your jammies. You can do your slave labour tomorrow.”

“Do I have to pick it all up?”

“Also nope. You started your work, I’m not gonna take it back. But make sure to tell Vaughn that if he kicks any of it, it’s his fault, not yours.”

“‘Kay Stiles. I’ll get ‘im to count my teeth.”

As far as teeth-brushing-made-fun routines go, getting whoever’s sharing the bathroom with you at the time to count ten strokes on each tooth doesn’t sound like all that much of a laugh-riot to him. Stiles’ raidomom’s strategy of flavoured toothpaste makes more sense to him. But at least this way, Helene will track down Vaughn and make him get ready too. It’s more than Stiles starts with most nights. He doesn’t have to count for anyone, it’s good enough for him.

Stiles considers marching around the house to find Crystal, and then gives it up. It’s a big house; five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen and a separate pantry. Instead he shouts her name, as loud as he can, then tacks _bedtime_ onto it. Wherever she is, she screeches back acknowledgement, so he can give it ten minutes before he tracks everyone down.

Stiles sticks his head in Jet and Donny’s room, pretty sure they’re already there. They both had a long day out in the sun, and while Stiles tried to be consistent with the sunscreen, he wouldn’t be surprised if they’re a little heatsick. Even if they’re not, he’s not anticipating much trouble. Donny and Jet are old enough to create their own schedules, for the most part. Maybe in the first weeks of Stiles babysitting they tried to avoid the rules, but at this point they know their bedtime is 8:30.

Sure enough, they’re both in their pyjamas, in bed. Yes they’re sitting up, blankets kicked to the footboard, but Stiles would be willing to bet they’ve already taken their vitamins and brushed their teeth. Better still, they’re both working on quiet activities that won’t give them second winds that Stiles will catch the brunt of. Jet has a hunk of embroidery floss and a print off, so it’s probably macrame or something. Across the room Donny’s got a hardcover Lemony Snicket book, spine broken with the way he’s holding it. Kid’s got good tastes, if dark. Five years from now he’s totally gonna be a goth freshman.

“You guys have an hour.”

“From Helene?”

Stiles snorts. “That’s cheating, you know better.”

Jet smiles. “We can always try.”

Stiles goes for a second pass at Helene next. She’s in her room, putting facecloth blankets over her smaller stuffed animals. The lower half of her face is covered in toothpaste foam, evidently Vaughn forgot to tell her to wipe up. That, or he just thought it was funny. The only checkmark on the self-maintenance checklist is that she’s managed to get her nightie on the right way. Good. That’s not always a sure thing.

“Up?”

Stiles can’t say no to that face. Nor should he. Helene’s got some crazy kiddie insomnia, diagnosed and everything. The more she’s been cuddled and calmed before she’s tucked in, the more likely it is that she’ll actually sleep. Stiles doesn’t hesitate at the request, just bends to pick her up and rests her against his side. If he had womanly hips it would probably be softer, but he hasn’t gotten any complaints yet.

It doesn’t really matter if he tucks in Crystal or Vaughn next. There’s only a year between them, and the Ivory parents have declared them to have the same bedtime, same as Donny and Jet. Stiles decides on Crystal, just because he didn’t actually witness her doing any bedtime grooming, so he should really check that all that was completed.

“Teeth,” he demands. Bending down to kid height while still holding a toddler would kill a lesser man, but Stiles has pretty sweet balance. If Beacon Hills had a gymnastics team he’d be on first string, for sure.

Crystal stretches up on her tiptoes and breathes hotly into his face. It smells like mint. For all he knows she just spread some on her tongue -he’s not sure what age kids grow out of eating pastes and the like- but he can’t do any more, besides demand she go to the bathroom a second time.

“Cuddling or snuggling?” Stiles asks Helene, his arm stabilizing her back so she can lean backwards to look at him. It sounds like a nonsensical question, but it’s not. In the Ivory household, cuddling means being in someone’s arms, whether it’s standing up or sitting on the couch, while snuggling is under the blankets side-to-side.

“Snuggling!”

“Okay, little miss.”

He resettles her beside Crystal so they can get some sister time while he spews forth marine knowledge for almost twenty minutes. Then it’s Helene in his arms again as he head across the hall to Vaughn.

“Hiya, Leenie.”

This time Stiles doesn’t even have to ask. Helene practically leaps out of his arms to flop beside the brother closest to her age.

“So what story were you think about tonight?” he asks, sitting on the edge of the bed not taken up by miniature humans.

“Hmmmm.” Vaughn puts a finger on his chin and giggling, Helene mimics him. “Origin of relationships!”

Stiles nods his head. It’s a common Norse myth. He can do this without pulling out a book. He’d have to adapt it anyway, the real version isn’t quite as seven year old friendly. But he can at least attempt to tell it in a storytelling way, the kind of way that makes you think of handwritten scrolls. 

“Once upon a time, in the long long ago, there were three brothers. Their names were Vili, Ve, and Odin. They were powerful apart, and stronger together. Working as one, they slew the Ymir and created the Earth, but that’s a different story.”

“That’s a different story,” Vaughn repeats, already transfixed.

“When the gods created Ask and Embla, the first human couple, it was Odin who gave the pair soul and life, Vili gave intelligence and a sense of touch, and Ve who gave them speech, hearing, and sight. They were very good brothers when they worked side by side. But eventually they split up, for it was time to be married and produce more Aesir. There were only the three, at the time, and the Aesir had great battles to fight with the Vanir.”

“But that’s a different story,” Vaughn whispers.

“You’re right. For our story, the long Aesir-Vanir war doesn’t matter. What matters is that Odin married Frigga. Only Frigga, for in those long ago days, a single person only married one single other person.”

“Ewww,” Helene yells into Vaughn’s neck.

Stiles reaches out to pull her ponytail lightly. “I know it’s weird, but it’ll be better by the end. Now shush, or Vaughn’s gonna get mad at you.”

“Okay.”

“Odin married Frigga, and they had many children together. Thor, Balder, Vali the most famous, but there are others.” 

Vaughn nods, eyes closed with concentration, clearly trying to remember what he’s already been told about the three. That’s good for Stiles, since he only remembers that there are at least a dozen possible children depending on the text you read, not the names of any of them. Something about tires, maybe?

“Odin and Frigga were happy together, it’s true. But Frigga was not Odin’s only concern. He had battles to fight, people to rule. He was gone for long periods of time, and Frigga was alone. Ve and Vili were the only people to truly pay attention to her. The longer Odin was gone, the more Frigga’s affections waned. Until finally, one day, she succumbed to her love of Vili, and Ve was close behind.”

“Even though they were brothers?”

Stiles does his best to not make a face. There has to be a way to explain that practically half of the Norse and Greek myths Vaughn will come across will have some kind of incest or rape, or both, without actually using either word.

“Remember that the Aesir were not humans, not mortal. Their rules were different.”

“Okay,” Vaughn says. Stiles mentally uncrosses his fingers. Bullshit excuse _sold_ to the masses.

“Ve, Vili, and Frigga were deep in love. So deep that the other Aesir felt jealous, even if they would not admit it. So deep that Odin himself could not deny it when he finally came home. Rather than fight his brothers to the death, as custom would ask, he wished them happiness, and turned his back. The other Aesir shamed him for not fighting for his wife, and so he turned his sword on them, slaying until they understood that Frigga was no longer his. And after that he left the three alone until Ragnarok fell. And that’s-”

“A different story!” They both shout.

“But wasn’t Odin lonely?”

And there’s the second bit of information of the evening that Stiles is going to happily censor and let Vaughn find out for himself when he gets old enough to troll libraries. There are two competing myths for what Odin did after he left Frigga, and neither are particularly child friendly. 

The first myth is proudly used by the Independent America League. All those single-for-lifers love the version where Odin used dark and deadly magics to split into three segments of himself; Harr, Thridi, and Jafnharr. They loved only each other and became the three mysterious advisors to the king of Gylfaginning. Those sad-sacks think it’s historical proof that one only needs themself to be happy.

The second post-Frigga myth is less obnoxious, but icky, frankly. At least in Stiles’ opinion. From what he understands getting lost in link spirals on Wikipedia, scholars who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to write a thesis on Norse myth have a lot of feelings about the pantheon calling Odin, Thor, and Freyr the mightiest triad of the gods. The ruler of the elves and his own damn son. Ick.

“I’m not sure if he was lonely. Being by yourself sounds lonely, but maybe he found others to love,” Stiles lies blatantly. “What I do know is that Ve and Vili eventually realised their mistake. They had created Ask and Embla to be mates, and they had been wrong. They knew, with Frigga by their sides, that Ask and Embla needed a third to truly be whole.”

“Duh,” Helene says. Vaughn elbows her, and Stiles fears for derailment of this entire bedtime as Helene starts crying and Vaughn starts shouting _I’m sorry_ in the fakest voice a six year old can muster. He holds his breath, waiting, but Helene doesn’t cry or elbow her brother back. Stiles is free to continue.

“For Ask and Embla they created Binn. He was strong, and he was loving, and he was everything they could have wanted. Only they didn’t understand. They were each others, and they thought Binn was meant to have his single other. Ve and Vili didn’t know how to explain. The mortals couldn’t listen to the Aesir. They ran and hid from the gods when they came to Earth, terribly scared. Finally Figga saw it, in a vision. She didn’t usually share them, she never had with Odin, but Ve and Vili listened well enough to hear a few. They listened this time, when she spoke, and they burned a rune into Binn’s chest before sending him to Ask and Embla again. What do you think it said?”

“Wunjo?” Vaughn guesses.

“Of course wunjo! And this time, when Ask and Embla looked at Binn, rune proclaiming joy burning in green fire across his chest, they knew it for what it was. The gods were telling them to enjoy him. That they should enjoy each other. Ask and Embla had been created for each other, they needed each other, but Binn was to bring them joy. As they realised this, naudiz appeared on both their chests. From that moment on, mortals had relationships of three, and anyone who doubted the idea was sent from far and wide to see the Aesir’s glowing runes. They burned until the day Ask, Embla, and Binn died, all at the same instant, all holding each other. And that’s the origin of relationships.”

“Wow,” Helene murmurs, eyes wide open with ideas.

“Thank you Stiles. Good night.” Vaughn punctuates his words with a yawn. It’s Stiles cue to pick Helene up and carry her out of the room, carefully not kicking the piles of Perler beads as he does.

Stiles pauses in the hallway, halfway between her tiny pink bedroom and the living room, where he’ll have to retreat in case of failure. “Helene, you sleepy?”

“No,” Helene sighs. She sounds so much older than four. 

Stiles wants to sigh too, but he can’t. Portia’s warned him of how much worse Helene feels when she thinks she’s disappointed an adult by not sleeping. There are other things he can’t do right now or she’ll freak out, and a panic attack is a panic attack, at four or seventeen. Asking _can you try_ is right out, as is _are you sure_. The medication only comes out if it’s been a few days since she last slept, and in the year and a half he’s been babysitting the Ivorys that’s only happened once.

“Do you want to rest?” Stiles suggests. That one’s okay. Apparently they use it at her daycare. Every kid has to lay down for nap to rest their bodies for a half an hour, even if they can’t sleep. That phrase doesn’t make her feel like the weird, broken, bad kid.

“Okay Stiles.”

It’s not quite success, but it’s not quite failure. He’ll get to put her down, and have time to himself for at least half an hour before he has to check that Donny and Jet really have turned the lights off. He might even get some time after that, if he can tiptoe to the boys quietly enough that Helene doesn’t hear him. It’s the most he can ask for, really.

***

Stiles isn’t good at house parties.

If his life was a teen comedy, he’d be the wacky one. The Jonah Hill, Seth Green, Mike Myers. The guy that people pay attention to because any minute now he’ll do something, like propose a trampoline contest, or crossdress, or steal a goat. The word zany would definitely be involved. 

Unfortunately, in real life, he’s just the weird spazzy friend that tries too hard and gets invited to the party because he’s friends with the cool kids. He’s the American Sid Jenkins, (ignoring the actual American Sid Jenkins, because that is a show MTV never should have bought), somehow lucky enough to know Tony and Maxxie. But he’s here, because you don’t say no to Lydia Martin when she demands the lacrosse team attend Jackson’s party. Stiles would never _want_ to say no to Lydia Martin. She’s his queen. One day she’ll get that. It’s in his plan.

Still, there’s a difference between bowing to the literal party line, and being ready to walk inside her big ass house. Well, one of her three big ass houses, all her divorced parents being equally rich and equally determined to appear the richest.

Stiles drums his hands against Roscoe’s wheel to try to burn off some of his excess energy. “Scott, I’m like overloaded with feelings here. On one hand, it’s all my dreams coming true. A going away party for Jackson. He’s moving to a different time zone, across a _ocean_. It’s so beautiful I could cry. On the other, why is she throwing a party? Doesn’t she remember what happened last time?”

Scott shrugs. “You didn’t really expect Lydia to never host another party.”

“I’m just saying, this seems on the level of choosing to go in the basement. Or splitting up and going with the slutty person, not the virgin. Or promising to be right back.”

“Come on Stiles. Get out of the car.”

Stiles looks at the door handle, then back at the house. “No, not quite yet. And trust me it does not make it any better that all my friends are horror movie cliches themselves.”

“I’m not a cliche!”

“You’re a werewolf.”

“Yeah, a pacifist one! How many movie werewolves don’t hurt anyone?”

Stiles doesn’t have the time to get into a movie debate. He’s too busy trying to gird his loins and convince himself to get out of the car. 

“Have we been invited specifically, or are we crashing?” Because while Scott’s now an integral member of the lacrosse team, a single winning goal doesn’t much make up for two seasons of riding the bench. Finstock doesn’t even know his name and Stiles is sure half the first stringers don’t either.

Scott looks at him incredulously. “Since when do you care?”

“Pissing Lydia off by crashing is not step one in this scenario.”

“Neither is letting some other guy or girl step in when it’s gonna be you.”

Before Stiles can explain that actually, the plan is being the eventual wunjofriend, once Lydia is ready to settle down, Scott has used his werewolf speed to run around the front of his car and tug on his arm. “Come on man. It’s gonna be you. Lets make this happen.”

Stiles nods his head jerkily. He can put his plan into action prematurely, if he changes a few tasks in the outline. He can activate operation Gorgeous Lydia And Her Naudiz. Plan GLAN, for short. 

He hops out of his car and walks towards her door with the most confidence he can gather. Swaggers, if you will. Then he loses all of it, because he forgot to lock his Jeep and it’s old enough that he has to run back and do it with his key.

“Lets try this again.” he mutters. From the front door Scott gives him a thumbs up, so clearly wolf ears are in play. 

Despite the free parking spaces on the street, the house is packed. People must have either walked or carpooled. It gives Stiles a bit of faith in humanity, though being a realist he’s sure it’ll be worn away by something or other by the end of the night.

It takes longer than Stiles would have thought to spot the girl of the night. Technically it’s Jackson’s party, but everyone knows it’s Lydia’s show, even the people dumb enough to not know every day is the Lydia show. She’s arching an eyebrow at a guy leaning dangerously close to the blown glass sculpture on the mantel when Stiles gets his first glimpse. It doesn’t surprise him at all that a few seconds later the guy backs away from the fireplace. Lydia has a way of striking fear in the hearts of men. It could be her supernatural power, if she didn’t already have the ability to raise people from the dead with true love. She looks gorgeous as always. A bright red dress with her hair should make her look like Jessica Rabbit, but she’s pulling it off. 

“Go talk to her,” Scott says. Stiles didn’t even realise he was watching Stiles’ watching. It’s a tossup whether that’s about werewolf situational awareness or just being a good wingman. Either way, his answer is the same.

“Uh, no. What am I supposed to say? Man, the way you glared that guy into not breaking your raidomom’s shit was hot?”

Scott pins him with a look. “You’re telling me your brain can’t come up with half a dozen funny things to say by the time you cross the room?”

“Coming up with them and executing them are totally different,” Stiles replies. He mourns for every witty repartee he’s ever bombed because he rambles through it, or trips over air as he’s delivering it. If there’s one fact in the universe he’s sure of, it’s that he will never be smooth.

“Whatever. Just the longer you’re here the more you’re gonna drink, and the more you drink the more you’ll suck at flirting.”

“The longer I’m here the longer I won’t drink, because the Adderall will make me dehydrated and die.” Stiles isn’t stupid. He knows what his meds mix and don’t mix well with. Should he ever be given the chance to try something, he has to already know if he can accept and shell out the ten bucks to buy it. He can’t keep the dealer with ecstasy in hand waiting for ten minutes while he looks it up on Erowid. Which, for the record, safe to take, but the Adderall will interfere with the MDMA so he’ll only feel the speedy effects, not the lovey world unity ones, which sort of defeats the purpose of doing E. 

“Die? But that time after Allison broke up with me, on the hill? And the time-”

“Exaggeration, calm down. It’s dehydrating, but that’s what water’s for. I just have to not aim for hella-tanked, because the Adderall won’t let me feel when I’m too drunk. Stimulant vs depressant. It’s like John Belushi, right?”

“Who?”

Right. Stiles always forgets that Scott doesn’t know classic movie fare like Animal House or Weird Science, thanks to his irrational dislike of movies with bad production. “Never mind. All you gotta know is I won’t drink a gallon of rum by the end of the night.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, then.”

“No, it’s fine.” After all, weed works just fine, if he can find someone who will share with the Sheriff's kid. Frankly he’ll save the pity for the people on MAOIs, because they can’t do anything. Shit, they can’t even eat cheese.

They split up, eventually. Stiles refuses to look at it like a horror cliche. For one thing, ‘no one will hear when you scream’ is very inapplicable, Scott will come racing towards him in a second. For another, the party’s been going for over an hour and no one’s started freaking out and hallucinating yet, so Stiles has high hopes that it’s just a normal party. If it is, he and Scott need to mingle before anyone thinks they’re naudizfriends. Stiles is pretty sure Quentin’s always had suspicions about his closeness with Scott. If the guy is quote proven right endquote, Stiles might get punched in the dick the next time he goes to Whole Foods.

So Stiles wanders through the massive house, looking for something to entertain him. What he’s not expecting is to stumble upon American Idol, the Spit Edition. 

It’s possible that it’s a part of the show now. Stiles wouldn’t know, he stopped watching as soon as he stopped caring if Paula and Simon and Randy ever hooked up. That was like a few episodes in, because while Simon is the built, sarcastic asshole of Stiles’ dreams, with a bonus sexy accent, fake ghetto swag and over-bearing niceness feature nowhere in his fantasies. So maybe these days the contestants _do_ kiss Randy before they do the running screaming fake thrill thing they probably record seven times. All he knows is there’s a literal line snaking through this particular den -Ms Martin has four that Stiles has seen- mixed gender but everyone particularly hot. It culminates in Jackson near the wall, Danny and Lydia flanking him.

Stiles watches as three people make out with Jackson for a full sixty seconds. A straight up minute, because Lydia calls time three times. Jackson tells a boy and a girl to fuck off, or the slightly politer equivalent. Stiles doesn’t really hear the words the first time, too busy trying to figure out what’s going on.

The third, a bleach blonde with a pixie cut, doesn’t get blown off. When she and Jackson part, he smirks, expression no less annoying for the red lips.

“Lydia, try it.”

And Lydia does. They swiftly start making out as half the line watches, the other half preoccupied with the drinks in hand or dancing to the music pumping from the other room. This one isn’t timed, Stiles counts the seconds. At sixty Lydia has her hand on the girl’s collarbone, showing freely from the deep scoop neck of her flower print dress. Stiles keeps watching, tells himself to look away, but can’t, not until Lydia breaks away.

“Good choice, Jackson.” She turns back to Pixie Cut and touches her face with the fronts of her perfectly manicured fingers. “I’ll let you know.”

When nothing happens except Jackson making out with the next girl in line, a Latina girl in impossibly tight skinny jeans and high heels Lydia probably knows the brand name of, Stiles knows he was right. This is an audition to replace Jackson, for Lydia and maybe even Danny, although his options are limited as male-monosexual.

It’s not like Stiles has morals. He’s not opposed to this on an indignant righteous stance. If Lydia and Jackson want to treat everyone at the party like toys for their game, it’s no different than they’ve been doing since freshman year, and the toys always consent. This line formed itself, no one lured them in. It’s probably anti-feminist or something, but whatever. Not Stiles’ problem. He just knows he’s not going to pass muster for Jackson. Even if he was the best kisser in the room, the asshole wouldn’t care.

He leaves the den, unable to watch any more. He does his best to cheer himself up; he has a few solo cups of beer, finds a room playing Panic At The Disco and dances spastically. It’s decent, if nothing to write home about. And then Scott’s tucking in beside him, and they bounce through half of a song by Hush Sound -what is this, the Decaydance room?- before Scott’s heading for the nearest keg. Stiles follows, of course.

There’s a short line. Scott eyes the people in it, then obviously does the mental math of how long waiting will take vs the chances of locating a free keg in another room. Scott stays where he is, so Stiles does the same. 

“I don’t even want to kiss Jackson,” Stiles complains a few minutes later as he holds the cup of cold beer to his sweaty forehead. Once it warms he’ll use it to clear his parched throat, but for now it’s more important to cool down, and it’s not like going outside for breeze will help.

Scott frowns at him before taking a swig of the beer that does nothing for him, no matter how much he swills. “How drunk are you? You’re here to kiss Lydia. Lydia,” he repeats, drawing the name into three long syllables. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me?”

“No. No things. Nothing. Especially nothing Jackson related.”

“So go get that! I heard she’s upstairs trying to be Sleeping Beauty.”

“It’s the den, the cobalt painted one, and not really. Jackson’s the one aiming for perfect Princely kiss. He’s just passing on the cream of the crop to Lydia.” Stiles pulls the cup down to drink. He’s disappointed to see that now that the foam’s dissipated there’s only a gulp or two of actual beer in it.

“So to kiss Lydia you have to kiss Jackson? Not worth it.”

“Right?” Stiles shouts. It’s not just him, he’s not the only one at this party that doesn’t buy Jackson’s charms. Scott sees the awful in it too.

Stiles looks behind him at the keg. There’s already another line formed. Rather than go wait again he snatches Scott’s red cup, because why is Scott even trying? Wasting, more like it. Unless Lydia’s magical skills extend beyond corpses to making liquid multiply tenfold, the beer is a finite resource that should go to the Stileses of the world, not the Scotts.

“Except, what if it is?” Stiles demands of Scott. “It’s not like I have to do it more than once. That’s the whole point, he’s going away. What if the asshole is an impartial judge, or I can get Danny to sub in? I could get Lydia tonight!”

“Do what you want, man.”

Stiles buries his head into Scott’s shoulder. “Ugh. I don’t even want Jackson to have lips!”

Scott shrugs, gently undulating Stiles’ throbbing head. He’s not smashed, but he’s too tipsy for this kind of decision. He has the GLAN plan for a reason, he makes poor choices when he lets his ADHD practice it’s impulsivity.

“I can’t tell you what to do. It’s your mouth. If you’re willing to put Jackson in it-”

“Blargh!” Stiles interrupts.

“Okay then, there’s your-”

“But, Lydia!”

“Dude, you’re being insane right now.”

He can hear the frown in Scott’s voice, and he takes exception to it. “Yes, because your entire courtship of Allison was sane. At least Lydia’s opaladad is only in Beacon Hills like a week a month now, not actively trying to kill my species.”

“Mr Argent’s better now. And I haven’t even met her raidodad.”

“We are so off the topic!” The topic is clearly sacrifices in the name of girls you love, and Scott isn’t even dagazing with a girl, never mind in love.

“Shut up and go kiss Jackson, otherwise it’ll be ‘I missed my chance’ all summer.”

Well shit. When he puts it like that... 

Stiles makes a quick pit stop to the keg across the room for a bit of courage, then heads back to the den. Unfortunately this time Jackson sees him. Before he can even join the line the asshole is yelling at him to get out.

Stiles stands firm in the face of scorn. “I could be a great lover, how would you know?”

“Well, you’re a virgin, for one thing.”

“Virginity is a social construct, and-”

“Out!” Jackson shouts.

“I’d leave before he takes a swing,” Greenberg offers sagely. Greenberg!

“Like he’ll pick you either,” Stiles says snidely.

Greenberg shrugs. “Better chance than you. I might be the scapegaot, but Jackson hates you.”

“Fuck Jackson!” Stiles snaps back. And if he’s a little loud, well, the douche just called him out, he has to expect some verbal retribution.

There’s only one way to sooth his rejected soul. And it’s important to soothe because the other option is punching Jackson in the face. If he’s lucky, he’d get one clean shot. That clean shot would be followed by Jackson beating the tar out of him. He doesn’t even need to out himself as a werewolf to do it, Jackson was perfectly capable of brutalising him in freshman year, when no one knew werewolves were a thing. If Stiles comes home bleeding from two lacrosse events in a row Dad will be profoundly upset. So really, option two isn’t much of an option.

He wanders until he finds the nearest keg. The room it’s in is playing some fairly industrial electronica, with a strobe light to match. Stiles isn’t particularly skilled at dancing, but this music makes it simple, it’s just a lot of letting his head go crazy as he throws elbows. It’s easy to get into it. Stiles doesn’t even notice he’s being watched until there’s a body writhing against his. He tries to play it cool but he can’t exactly pull off Isaac-Erica-Jackson. Sooner rather than later he whirls around to see who it is, besides a girl short enough that her chin lands between his shoulder blades.

Stiles doesn’t recognise her. Maybe she’s a senior, or from the next county over, or a distant cousin of one of the team members. She looks his age though, she’s not some kid from the junior high that sneaked in, thank god. Stiles would have to shower with a brillo pad if a thirteen year old was all up on him. She’s caucasian, or at least light skinned, though her skin tone is hard to see in the rapid flashes of glaring white light. What’s clearer is her obviously dyed hair. Best Stiles can tell, it’s safety cone orange.

She doesn’t let the sudden lack of a dancing partner stop her from moving. She does however initiate conversation. “You like Crystal Castles?”

“Who doesn’t?” Stiles shouts back, not quite forward enough to put his lips to her ear.

“Everyone dancing to a Britney remix in the other room?”

“Oh leave her alone!” Stiles wails theatrically before smiling. It’s an oldie, but a goodie.

The girl laughs. “Any other ancient memes you want to thrill me with?”

Stiles points upwards. “Look! Ceiling cat thinks you look hot tonight.”

She laughs even harder. Holy shit, who would have guessed that spending hours trolling Reddit and 4chan and LJ would be the answer to how to pick up girls?

She stands on her tiptoes and leans in to whisper into his ear. Stiles puts his body into lockdown so he doesn’t react to her sexy girl scent. Stiles doesn’t know who to blame that girls get good soaps and perfumes, and he has to choose between ‘musk’ and ‘avalanche’ but he blames them heartily. Thanks to Scott’s Axe -which he can somehow still wear, even with werewolf senses- Stiles is in no way desensitized to, god, is that marshmallow? Or vanilla pear?

Her bottom lip touches his earlobe, and he doesn’t shudder because that would be pathetic. She waits a beat, then whispers “cake.”

“You play Portal?”

“Who doesn’t?” she replies, mimicking him.

“I dunno, people who like Pong?”

Her hand slips onto his ass. “Your naudizfriend like Pong on their aerial tv?”

Fuck. Fuckity fuck. That’s not good. Before Quentin and Allison he could have gotten Scott to pretend the role, and maybe in another month he’ll be able to, but right now the guy’s all unstable, and no one likes an unstable horny werewolf.

“It’s just me, actually. But we could dagaz?”

She shakes her head, cute fluorescent orange hair bouncing. “I don’t dagaz. But if you find someone else hot, come find me and we can fool around.”

Stiles sighs as she walks away. Scott’s still too sensitive, he’ll say no if Stiles asks. And interesting her was a total fluke. There’s no way he’ll find another person who wants him, not in this crowd.

He got waylaid by the music before, but he won’t allow that to happen again. He needs beer. So much beer he forgets everything, from Lydia and Jackson to hot girl to how to count and tie his shoes. He shouldn’t be drinking that much, but fuck it. Beer’s not whiskey, he’ll probably piss it out before he’s drunk enough to be in danger.

By the time he sees Scott again, Stiles might not be black out drunk enough to forget how math works, but he’s definitely forgotten how to count his drinks. That’s why when Scott asks if he’s having a good time, Stiles answers with “lots!” Because he had lots, so it’s funny.

Stiles throws an arm over Scott’s shoulder. When it feels good he adjusts his stance so he can throw the other over the other. If he bent them a little more it would be a slow dance position, but you don’t slow dance to Mindless Self Indulgence, so he keeps his arms locked. _I’ve been denied all the best ultrasex_ yeah, Stiles knows how that feels. You sing it, Jimmy.

“Use your wuffy abilities to pump the keg super fast and get me six beers.” He’s not saying the word werewolf, so it’s safe.

“Uh, no, man.”

“But I need beer. My life is hard. So hard.” Stiles grinds his forehead against Scott’s to prove his point.

“Derek would murder me if after everything that’s how it gets out; because I pumped a keg too intensely.”

“Derek’s pretty when he’s mad.”

Scott laughs. “So not my thing. But lucky you, because he must be always pretty.”

“Why won’t he dagaz with me? He should. I’m fun.”

“You are. I guess he’s just dumb.”

“Yeah.” That’s a good application of logic, Stiles thinks. Scott’s a helpful brainstormer.

“Or maybe he’s a female-mono? I’ve only ever heard him talk about women.”

“That’s super dumb.”

Scott punches his arm. It’s light and friendly for a werewolf, so it makes Stiles stagger. “Don’t be a jerk about people’s sexualities. Danny’s a male-mono, and if any of his friends hear you talking shit about monos you’re in trouble. Also it just makes you an ass.”

“Sorry, Scott.”

“You don’t have to apologise. Just don’t be shitty.”

“Okay.” Stiles can do that, he thinks. He can not be shitty. It’s not Danny’s fault he’s different. Or Derek’s, if it’s true. People like what they like.

“Also, I’m good with babysitting you-”

“Wuffs are good DD’s,” Stiles agrees. He jams his hand into his pocket while Scott continues to talk.

“But you need to not drink for at least a half hour before you start again. My mom would totally tell your dad if you came in with alcohol poisoning.”

Stiles nods with whatever Scott’s saying. He’s not really listening, but Scott’s probably right. He usually is when he’s trying to do the caretaking thing. 

Once it’s in his hand, Stiles brandishes his keychain in the small space between himself and his bro. He’s proud to have gotten his tricksey keys out of his pocket. Stupid pockets, crammed with everything he might need at a party. Girls are so lucky they get to carry around purses. He gets closer to Scott and tucks them beyond his waistband into Scott’s underwear like he’s a sexy stripper, not a sexy designated driver.

“Shit, Stiles. When you’re sober you need to do that again.”

If Stiles hammered senses aren’t mistaken, Scott’s turned on by Stiles’ hand in his underwear. Which doesn’t make any sense. “Thought you were heartbroken?”

“It sucks. About both of them, it sucks. But there are still more chances with Allison. And Quentin... Quentin wants to be a wolf. He has this jerk off fantasy of me giving him the Bite during sex, somehow an Alpha. Even if I magically was, I’m never going to bite anyone. Except my mom, maybe, if she was dying and it was the only way.”

“Pull a Gerard,” Stiles slurs. Possibly hypocritical of Scottie-boy, but oh well. Gerard’s a shit. Ms McCall’s great and would actually deserve supernaturally prolonged life.

“Okaaaay. Let’s go sweat this outta you on the floor.”

“Yay!” Stiles agrees. Dancing with cool people is the best. He wishes he knew more cool people.

***

Stiles is pretty good at most board games. The hardest part for him is waiting for it to be his turn again. He’ll do what he’s gotta do to get his paycheck, so to speak, but multi-player video games are really better for his ADHD than making a move, waiting ten million years, then making another. Luckily for him the Ivory kids have split up so it’s not him every sixth turn. He’s playing Trouble with Donny and Vaughn, the green to their yellow and red. At the other end of the long kitchen table Crystal is playing against Helene in Guess Who. It could be the perfect storm for a meltdown, if Stiles wasn’t too strategic for that. With a combination of suggestion and the tiniest bit of shame he’s convinced Jet to help Helene, sparsely enough that it’s not unfair in the other direction either.

Stiles eyeballs the amount of play left in his game, then looks over at the three. Jet’s abandoned his own chair to let Helene sit on his lap, and Crystal shows no signs of being jealous. Excellent. “You’ve got time for one more game, probably. Then you gotta move so I can start dinner.”

He hasn’t actually thought up a meal yet. It’ll be healthy, obviously. Back in the day, when Graham barely knew him as Sheriff Stilinski’s kid, the healthy meals Stiles always dropped off at the station were a big selling point for the coveted role of babysitter. He’s not about to drop the routine now. Partially because he believes in healthy food for vulnerable people -of which he isn’t, curly fries fuckyeah- and partially because the Ivory parents would be disappointed if he did. Plus it shows off his skills of manipulation without tarnishing them by bragging. Getting a three year old to eat whole wheat toast without jam is almost as difficult as getting a grown-ass man to. 

Maybe he’ll do something easy, like lean chicken breast and a salad. It will inevitably be covered in ranch dressing, because the kids don’t want salad if it’s not more white than green. But it’ll be eaten, and all the kids like chicken. Especially if he pulls out the stovetop grill. Everyone knows the black char lines make meat tastier.

“Can we have popsicles for dessert?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Stiles starts. All the kids smile, and he acts like he doesn’t see Jet and Donny high fiving under the table. His deals are notorious for working out great for the Ivorys. What they haven’t seemed to figure out yet is that it’s always a win-win situation.

“What deal?” Crystal asks, pragmatic as always.

“You guys clear your plates of everything green. And I mean everything. Unless I can manufacture penicillin from it in the kitchen sink, no garbage about how it tastes weird, maybe it’s been in the fridge too long, did you get it from the crisper, maybe it’s moldy. _None_ of it. And you do the dishes. Not you _help_ me, you five figure out a system and you do it all. And in return, we’ll walk to Milk Tub.”

The kids all shout some version of yay. Helene does victory arms and nearly punches Jet in the nose. Only quick eldest brother reflexes save him. 

It doesn’t surprise Stiles at all that the kids behave perfectly after that. Bribery is a great parenting strategy. Or at least it’s a great babysitting one, when you don’t have to worry that it’s slowly undermining their respect of your authority.

Getting them to the ice cream parlour is easier said than done. By the time they’re halfway there Stiles is wishing he took the Jeep. Never mind that it only has five places to sit, he could have tied Donny to the roof. But there’s no turning back now. For one thing, the kids might murder him. For another, he deserves the Maple Walnut Fudge that is waiting to him.

They’re about three blocks away when Stiles hears the pathetic high pitched horn of a bike. With a sigh he begins herding the kids to the thin strip of gravel between sidewalk and road. Cyclists are supposed to ride in the road, unfortunately some enjoy being total dicks to pedestrians. But no asshole in a helmet comes racing past. Instead the bicyclist slows to one notch above toppling over from lack of momentum beside him.

“Hey.”

“Children, this is Scott. Scott, this is children.” Donny and Jet should recognise him at least. There’s been more than one occasion in which Stiles has had to bring them to a lacrosse practice. Which is good times for all, honestly, because when they get bored they call out fake plays and Greenberg thinks they’re real and attempts them and Coach gets this twitch in his eye. Hilarious.

“Did you track me down for ...reasons? Because as you can see, I am weighed down by pre-pubescents.”

“I was just biking.” Scott’s voice is totally calm, it doesn’t sound like he’s censoring himself for young human ears. “Saw you. Where you going?”

“Ice cream!’ Helene screams.

“Whaaaaat? That’s super cool! I could go for some ice cream right now. What’s the best flavour?”

Stiles has the sudden urge to shove Scott off his bike as the dangerous question propels all five into bickering again. He would too, since it’s not like road burn would stick for more than five minutes, except he can’t do it in front of five children under ten. A) bad role modelling, B) they would totally tell on him to their parents.

Milk Tub has hardcore air conditioning, a fact Stiles has never been more grateful for than when he hustles the Ivorys inside and finally gets to let go of Helene and Vaughn’s hideously sweaty hands. He’s got goosebumps almost immediately, a fact which nearly has him believing in god.

The parlour is a weird place with three distinct sets of clients. There are the families who want cream cream for dessert, just like Stiles and the fledglings surrounding him. Then there are the stoners. Stiles would blame that on Milk Tub being in the same strip mall as Beacon Hills’ only head shop, except he’s pretty sure stoners just like snacks and would cross the town to get ice cream. He wouldn’t know. He’s never smoked outside of a lone inhale at a party, every dealer too paranoid to sell to the Sheriff’s kid.

The oddest set of ice cream purchasers are the third, and they’re just as easy to pick out of the line up as the beanie wearing teenagers with irritated eyes. To put it plainly, they’re the slutty looking customers. Milk Tub is sort of a hook up spot. Apparently back in the day, when his parents were young there was a singles bulletin board. People just never stopped coming in to find matches, even once Milk Tub remodelled and put up artwork everywhere.

Stiles hustles the kids into line behind two stoners and is completely unsurprised when Scott falls in beside him. Scott always commits to whatever he decides to do, even if it’s just escorting his best friend and a bunch of kids to frozen goodness.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Dude, it’s Thursday. Same as every Thursday. I take care of them until midnight, go home and talk to dad because he waits up, and then video games or a tv tropes spiral or something.”

“You could come over after?”

“You don’t have shit to do in the morning?”

“Yeah, but I can be sleep deprived for one day. Nothing else is going on, so.”

Stiles shrugs. “Sure, whatever.”

They’re the two stoners and a hot girl in front of them from it being their turn, and Stiles has finally convinced Donny that until his allergy test results come in he can’t let him try the new Lemon Lime Dream flavour -Tamryn’s let him know that citrus allergy is an almost sure thing- while Scott is at the head of the group wisely distracting Helene so she doesn’t melt down with impatience. Babysitting is way easier with two people, holy shit. 

That’s when a voice interrupts. “Hey handsome. That your naudizfriend?”

The next five seconds are Stiles getting whiplash as he rapidly looks for the voice, and once found looks the guy up and down, then looks at Scott, then looks around the cluster of tiny bodies as he automatically does his fifty millionth head count.

“Nah. Scott’s my best friend forever, not my naudiz.”

The guy smiles. He’s totally one of the type that look hotter while grinning ridiculously, unlike the Derek Anger-Makes-Me-Sexy type. “That’s cool. I’m kinky anyway, I like dagazing better. Can I get your number?”

“Do you mean his number?” Stiles asks dumbly. He’s sweaty and gross and you can see Scott’s abs through his thin white tank top.

“Not if you’re not naudizfriends. How about I give you my number, you drop your brothers and sisters at home, and then you call me?”

Stiles hands over his phone because every bit of that sounds like a good idea. It’s been fucking forever since he’s dagazed. He only has one correction. “Babysitting, actually.”

“Wow. Sweet gig. Rare.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so whenever their parents come home you can come over. I stay up late, don’t worry.”

“I can help you see dawn,” Stiles replies, then smoothly doesn’t hyperventilate as he worries about how cheesy that was. Thank god the teen only smirks. He fades to the back of the line just in time, the stoners stepping away with their sundaes to leave the Ivorys to press their bodies against the glass shelving.

The ordering of ice cream goes surprisingly smoothly. Making everyone figure out what they wanted on the walk to Milk Tub, down to cone type and chocolate or fudge square on top, means they don’t hold up the line as everyone changes their minds a hundred times. No one attempts to sneakily ask for more than one scoop, or beg the scoop-lady for sample spoons of all the flavours. It’s more than Stiles could have hoped for.

“You’re really gonna blow off your dad to dagaz?” Scott asks in a low voice. The effort is unneeded, all the children have rallied around letting Vaughn count out the change for their order. It’s probably driving the people in line behind them insane, but Stiles maintains you have to develop a vaccine against irritating others early. See also Jet making Finstock pull his hair out.

“No,” Stiles answers. “I’m gonna say goodnight to Dad first, then I’m gonna go have crazy awesome dagaz sex wth...”

“You don’t even know his name!”

“I’m sure he put it in my phone.” Worst case scenario Stiles can just yell out oh god instead of oh Mark/Darrell/Zachary.

It’s when Stiles has them herded and going for the nearest long table that he encounters his first problem. Crystal’s not settling on one of the chairs. She’s nowhere to be-

She’s halfway across the parlour, and Stiles tries to calm his racing heart as he scurries to collect her, Scott guarding the rest. He didn’t lose her. He doesn’t have to call his dad, screaming into the phone about abduction and possible pedos. 

“No, Crystal. You have to eat with us. I don’t want to lose anyone. Your parents would get really mad if they had to pick you up from the lost and found.” More like the Ivorys would kill him in his sleep. Graham might have a gun, but it’s Portia Stiles is truly scared of pissing off.

“But Kerry’s eating with her step-opaladad right over there!”

“Sorry, rules is rules,” Stiles replies, pulling out the last chair at the table and patting it.

“Kerry Weinstein’s my wunjofriend,” Crystal says.

“No she’s not,” Jet dismisses.

“She is too! I love her!”

“You’re seven, you love ladybugs.”

“I love her and we’re going to get married.”

Donny blatantly decides to pander to her, because Crystal and Donny get along the best. “So Kerry’s your naudizfriend then.”

“No, wunjofriend. Like mommy is to raidomom and dad.”

“Kerry’s the only person you love right now, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So when you’re alone then you love one person they’re your naudizfriend because you _need_ them. And then the two of you meet another person and they’re your wunjofriend because finding them has brought you _joy_. It’s the rules. Because the Norse said so.”

“Like Ve and Vili and Frigga!” Vaughn shouts.

“It’s called etymology,” Stiles provides. Crystal loves facts, so telling her a few might make her less cranky about being told she’s wrong. “Why words are what they are. Etymology.”

“Etymology,” Crystal whispers to herself. Stiles is pretty sure she’ll be looking that up as soon as they get home.

***

It’s interesting, the different ways Mr Mrs and Mrs Ivory come home. Stiles doesn’t need to know about the sex lives of people old enough to have birthed him, but sometimes he thinks he can guess, just by looking at whose clothes are slightly askew, and who’s got bruises showing.

Them returning to the house means they’re back to being primarily parents though. As much as Tamryn might still want to kiss Graham, instead she separates from her husband and wife and touches his bicep. “How was everything?”

“Helene fell asleep on the couch so the others played in their rooms. No complaining, even. We walked to get ice cream, but everyone had salad and slices of chicken for dinner, so. No nosebleeds, bruises or cuts, no arguments that weren’t solved before bed.” Stiles shrugs. “Came up roses, honestly.”

“I suspect the ice cream,” Portia jokes.

Stiles smirks. The truth is even if she was right the Ivorys probably couldn’t afford to give five kids mom-n-pop indie ice cream every night. Especially once they got old enough to start wanting double scoops. But Stiles is hardly about to say that. He’s learned growing up with Scott how to sensitively skirt money issues.

They spend a few minutes more talking about the kids. They’re parents, they have specific questions, Stiles gets it. He’d hate to be a grade school teacher. Twenty five kids means seventy five parents who all want to know every detail. But it’s late and they have work in the morning, and they also have to deal with the dilemma of whether or not to move Helene from the den love seat, possibly waking her in the process. So it’s sooner rather than later when Tamryn promises that he’ll get paid for both weeks next Thursday, and Portia walks him to the door so she can lock it behind him.

Stiles is really intensely tempted to drive straight from the Ivorys to Taylor’s house. They’ve only been talking for six hours, and intermittently at that. Taylor seems pretty into the sexting thing, and Stiles couldn’t answer with his best descriptive words when surrounded by children. He’s got a bit of a backlog, and he can answer them or he can cut out the middleman and show up on Taylor’s porch and drop his jeans.

Stiles takes his normal route home. It’s difficult, takes the willpower of the gods, but he manages. Take that, every doctor and therapist he’s even been forced to sit with! It ultimately comes down to having a big question mark hovering over the left path, and knowing exactly what’s down the right. Dagazing with Taylor would almost certainly happen, but it’s impossible to guess specific acts, and there are some Stiles likes more than others. On the other hand on Thursdays Dad waits up for him to get home, despite his Friday morning shift. Supposedly it’s so that if there were any problems he can relate them to Graham as a safe arbiter. Like Stiles has _ever_ had trouble speaking for himself. In reality, he’s pretty sure his dad just wants to hear about his day. They both lived through so much bullshit when Stiles was a kid that omission feels like just as much a lie as anything else. Stiles might have to keep lying about the whole werewolf thing, even when it kills him, but he’s sure as hell not going to hold back anything he could easily share. He can give his father that much, at least.

***

Stiles collapses onto Scott’s bed. He might not have a werewolf’s nose with the ability to smell unchewed gum in pockets, and whether there’s enough gas in the tank, and emotions, but his pathetic human nose can still appreciate Scott’s dirty laundry and hoarded barbeque chips. And yeah, that’s what orgasms smell like. To the average girl it would probably be rank, especially since Scott stopped being able to use Febreeze after he got bit. To Stiles it’s soothing. It smells like home, almost. Like a cousin’s house, maybe, since a person’s actual house always smells neutral to themselves, and Scott’s room has a definite funk. But it’s _his_ funk.

“You okay?”

“I fucking hate my psychiatrist. Like with the flames of a thousand suns. The heat of every fucking star in the galaxy and beyond. Just give me immediate release you fucking fuck. You fucking fuck!” Stiles repeats, louder, because it’s satisfying to swear at the top of his lungs. He doesn’t even care if Melissa hears. Ms McCall’s a nurse, she’s probably heard every combination of curse words ever.

Scott moves from his desk to the edge of the bed, giving Stiles the room to pace if he wants to. Stiles appreciates the sentiment, but doesn’t need it. This particular bad day is racking up tallies on the brain side, not the body side.

“I just don’t get why he has to be such a shit. I mean clearly I’m not okay. Do I seem okay to you right now? The XR is not doing it today, and all I need is a IR and I’d be fine, but nooo, can’t get a prescription because he thinks I seem fine. What I should really do is go stand in his office and just talk to him. Just let him experience a whole day of this, and then maybe he’d give me some motherfucking IR. I mean it’s not like it’s any different than someone on Prozac who takes lorazepam after a panic attack. Or you pre wolf, having a preventer inhaler and a rescue inhaler. Why the fuck can’t I be rescued?”

“I’m sorry Dansk sucks. Mom thinks he’s a shit too. But you only have to be here for two more years. Once you go to college you’ll be in a big enough city that there’ll be dozens of psychiatrists to pick from.”

“I’ll go to a campus large enough that it’ll have it’s own support staff. Ohio State’s got like fifty five thousand students, there’s no way they don’t have psych staff. Plus snowy winters, which I feel will improve my mood considerably.” Stiles is off on his first tangent of what will be thousands today, about hip high fields of snow and he’s never gotten to push Roscoe out of a snow rut but it sounds like a good life experience.

“So I’m gonna go out on a limb and say brain day?”

“You think?” Stiles snorts. Regardless of keeping to his pill regime religiously -he only ever sold them for cash once and it did not go well, was not even close to worth it- sometimes his system fights back. Sometimes it’s his body and he can just not stop moving, fidgets until he knows he’ll be sore the next day, but can’t stop. Sometimes it’s his brain and he thinks in useless three second bursts. Never mind a brilliant essay on something completely off topic, he can get to where he has a medical excuse for not writing a test.

“Well, I’m not Dr. Dansk, so you don’t have any point to prove with me, but you can talk as much as you want.”

Stiles doesn’t say thanks. He’s not really a manners kind of guy, especially when he’s pissed off about his stupid brain, and stupid doctors that could stupid help him but won’t because they’re... wait for it... stupid. Scott doesn’t need it anyway. He knows how to play best friend on both body and brain days, same as Stiles used to be a great friend through asthma attacks.

“Want me to invite someone over? Give you more to talk to?”

“Who do we know that wants to have twenty conversations in a minute?” The list is pretty fucking minimal, as far as Stiles can count. There’s Scott, patience borne out of a decade of friendship. Scott’s mom is pretty good at handling it, for the same reason. There’s Quentin, who likes facts at any time of day or night, and liked when Stiles told him ones he didn’t already know. And finally Quentin’s best friend Nelly, who Stiles has only met a few times, but who has triplet little brothers, one with ADHD, the other two of which spur him on, so she gets him. But Quentin and Nelly are out for obvious reasons, and it would be weird to make Scott and his mom hang out all day.

Honestly, Stiles probably should have just stayed home, in front of his laptop with a dozen different chats open so he could flick between tabs with the speed of The Flash. But he hasn’t had enough Scott time this summer, between Scott’s summer school and his dad signing him up to sort through Deputy Ting’s father’s book hoarder basement. Apparently the eighty year old can no longer lift knee high cardboard boxes the way he once could, and before the floor to ceiling shelves get installed the books need to be sorted. At nine bucks an hour, Stiles is gonna get rich, if the mildew doesn’t kill him first.

“Isaac will come over.”

“Since when is Isaac talking to us?”

The slight jostling of the bed is probably Scott shrugging. “I didn’t mark it on the calendar, man. A few weeks?”

Stiles has _not_ been talking to Isaac for a few weeks. The post-kanima weeks of school were full of silent judgement, and he’s been hella-scarce all summer. It’s sort of impossible to force a grocery store meet cute on someone when they can smell you from a mile away. Not that Stiles has been desperate to see him, it’s not like Isaac is Lydia. But the point still stands, that this is a Scott Only rekindling of friendship.

Which means that he might not actually be safe with the Beta. “Isn’t Isaac a mini-Derek, with the random acts of violence? I’d rather they not be against me if I piss him off with my, you know, non-stopness.”

“If it pisses him off he can leave, but he’s a cool guy so I don’t think it will. Besides, he’s kind of willing to put up with a lot to get a break from Derek.”

“Yeah. I guess the ‘I owe you my werewolfness’ only goes so far.”

***

Stiles isn’t good at holding grudges. It’s probably because of the ADHD. Or maybe today is just blame it on the bad brains day, and tomorrow he’ll feel different, chock-full of grudge. But today Isaac walks into Scott’s room and Stiles should maybe hate him for the shunning thing, but he just can’t. There’s nothing there to sustain the feeling.

“Hey Scott,” Isaac says, more friendly than Stiles knew they were, at least up until twenty minutes ago. “Hey Stiles,” he says noticeably less so.

“Hey Isaac,” he replies, not moving from the current faceplant. Isaac’s wolf ears will hear him anyway.

“Scott says your brain is working too fast.”

“Scott’s right.”

“You’re not talking more than normal. Less, even.”

“You’ve been here two seconds, what do you know?” Besides, he does his best to not let it be a verbal thing around other people. He’s aware of how ridiculous and insane he sounds, and this doesn’t need to be an anecdote for Derek.

Scott knows better than to suggest a movie. In this sort of state it’d be torture. Instead they take turns sharing Youtube videos. And by sharing he means Scott’s got nothing, Stiles has a few things from forums, and Isaac apparently used Youtube as abusive dad escapism because his bookmarks number in the thousands. Some Isaac suggest are too long, but Stiles gets why they would be funny if he could focus, so he tells Isaac to save them for later. Still, there’s an abundance of vids that are funny or messed up or both that are under three minutes long. Some are even under a minute long. Stiles sort of wishes they made vids seconds long. But if they do so, Isaac doesn’t have any saved.

It’s a good way to pass time, especially once he’s got Tetris on his phone. Stiles does his best to not talk during a video. In exchange neither comment as he rapidfire rambles as Isaac scrolls for something new to entertain and impress. Scott’s used to it, but Isaac is showing remarkable restraint.

Stiles is like eighty five percent sure he’s getting a vibe from the two boys in front of him. He’d trust his judgement more if he was working at full capacity, but they’re sitting a lot closer than he would have predicted, and sure Scott is an indiscriminate smiler, but Isaac is most definitely not.

“Do you guys wanna hook up?”

Isaac falls off the bed. Isaac falls off the freakin’ bed and Stiles immediately covers his mouth with both hands so a giggle doesn’t leak out. It’s probably futile, werewolf senses can no doubt pick it up. But it’s mannerly to at least try, and he’s not sure what Isaac’s deal breakers are when it comes to the attitudes of hook-ups.

“Sorry. Wasn’t expecting that,” Isaac mutters. 

“Yeah, okay. But that doesn’t really answer the question. Hooking up. Thoughts? Feelings? Opinions? Questions? Diagrams? Encoded messages? Imp-”

“Didn’t you two used to dagaz before Quentin and Allison?”

“Yeah, but that was just dagazing. It’s not like he was my naudiz then, or anything.” Stiles wants to spend the rest of his life with Scott, and maybe some day when he and Scott are both married the six of them will have a crazy night of swinging and allude to it in winking Christmas toasts, but Scott doesn’t love him in the way of flowers and buying jewelery. Stiles could never tell Vaughn that Scott was the boy Ve and Vili and Frigga said was his destiny.

“I don’t want to.”

“No is no,” you don’t have to be the son of a Sheriff to know that, “but if it’s because you’re not ready to be a wunjo, well, see previous statement with tacked on not naudizfriends now either.”

“I’m not scared of being someone’s wunjofriend. It’s not like I have residual trauma from my raidodad leaving me with my dad.”

Stiles would beg to differ, considering the disgruntled tone he used for raidodad. He’s about to remind Isaac that he gets it, his moms fucked his dad’s head pretty good -not to mention his own- when Isaac continues. “I’m already a naudiz though.”

“Shit, who?” Stiles demands.

As he waits for the answer, Stiles looks from Isaac on the floor to Scott still cross legged beside him. Maybe he’s been a bit out of the loop, but he wouldn’t have guessed by that much. And what about Scott and Isaac’s bond? Shouldn’t Scott already know who Isaac’s about to bring into the supernatural fold and have told him? Scott’s expression is bothered, verging on upset. It wouldn’t be if Scott had prior knowledge, so at least Scott’s not keeping secrets. Masterplans, Stiles can understand. Gossip, not so much.

“Boyd. And Erica’s my naudiz.”

Stiles blurts out “present tense?” before he can stop himself.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he tries futilely.

“No. What?”

“I just said present tense, like currently. Are you Skyping?”

“That would be pretty hard considering they’re kidnapped.”

“I know that’s what Derek said before, but it’s been like six weeks and no one’s found anything. Isn’t it more likely that they fled after Argent let them go because they didn’t know Scott and Derek killed Gerard?”

“No,” Isaac snaps.

Stiles shrugs. He thinks his theory is valid, but he’s not going to argue with a guy that can break his bones like pretzels.

Scott, darling guy he is, tries to change the topic. “What you need us for? I thought you dagazed last week with some hot guy.”

“And by thought he means I regaled him with glorious detail,” Stiles explains to Isaac.

“You’ve never heard of TMI, Stiles?”

“Nope. And yeah, but that was last week.”

“So call and say you want a rematch of dick swordplay.”

Stiles makes a face. “How exactly am I supposed to do that? It’s not like he’s you. Am I supposed to just text and say remember the pale shorn guy with five kids at the Milk Tub? Wanna finger me again?” 

“Yes.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Scott agrees, the ernest bastard.

From seemingly nowhere Stiles’ phone smacks him in the chest. He doesn’t even remember where he put it down, but Scott obviously did.

“You’ve got ten minutes to text him before I take your phone back and do it myself.”

“That’s a bad threat,” Stiles points out. “I would embarass myself far more than you would.”

“Because I don’t want you to get embarrassed. I want you to get laid. Getting laid is great!”

Isaac smirks, still on the floor. He seems to have decided it’s his new home. “If you want me to leave so you two can dagaz, I will.”

Stiles shakes his head. “He’s in mourning. He doesn’t want to dagaz, he wants his true loves or nothing. Unfortunately Allison isn’t back for weeks before he can even get a chance again, and Quentin is gone.”

“A human freaked out by werewolves, what a surprise.”

“Excuse you,” Stiles replies, kicking out off the edge of the bed to get Isaac lightly in the chest. He will not have his prone to risk, unphased by danger character maligned.

“Present company excluded. But you’re the outlier.”

Stiles isn’t dumb enough to let the clock run down. What he said is true; Scott would do a better job of promoting him than he himself would. The problem is if Isaac gets bored first. He’s a loose cannon, it’s impossible to guess what he’d say. 

Stiles types out **this is purple undies from Milk Tub. I’ve got a variety of colours if you want to see them on your floor.** He sends it and immediately gets the text equivalent of buyer’s remorse. There’s no way that was the right thing to write. Awful. Terrible. And he can’t take it back, damn cell phones to hell.

Isaac can obviously smell the sudden anxiety. He leans backwards over the edge of the bed, contorting his spine in ways that amateurs would find impressive, but Stiles doesn’t. Stiles is a painful stretches master. He once fell asleep with his face on the carpet and his feet on his pillow. The kama sutra will be his _bitch_ once he finds someone willing to look at diagrams with him. Isaac uses the awkward twist to snatch the phone out of Stiles’ hand, and Stiles is also not impressed with the speed in which he does so. He’s a jaded old man when it comes to werewolf skillsets. Time travel to last year for the shock and awe, please-k-thanks.

“Good. You didn’t assume he remembered your name, you tied it to the five senses, and you heavily implied more orgasms. I’m impressed.”

“That tone is surprise, which is offensive, buddy. I am an excellent pick up artist.” It’s a complete one-eighty from his feelings of seconds ago, but a guy can’t just let his best friend’s second best friend diss him.

They have time for an oldie but a goodie -Stiles can sing along to every word of George Washington, used to have it converted to play on his old iPod- before the phone vibrates with another text. For the second time he gets his cell tossed at him. Stiles doesn’t come close to fumbling the catch, because he’s a goddamn lacrosse player, thanks. He might not be Jackson, but he can catch a damn projectile.

**I don’t do repeats.**

“Well fuck me. Well, actually, don’t. Apparently.”

“He said he’s busy?” Scott asks.

“No he totally didn’t. He said he’d be too bored to dagaz a second time.” Like, _fuck_. Ouch. Maybe he’d been a bit passive in bed, just taking what Taylor was doing, but he’d thought Taylor’d enjoyed giving it.

“Why are you happy?”

Stiles looks at Isaac, ready to bark out that he’s definitely not, but Isaac is pinning his question on Scott.

“I dunno. I guess it’s just good that you’re not dagazing with some sleazy guy who didn’t even like you.”

The hell? “You seemed perfectly fine a minute ago telling, no, _threatening_ me into texting said sleazy guy.”

Scott shrugs, uncomfortable. “I dunno. Guess I just wanted you to get laid.”

Before Stiles can question to tone, the expression, just about every thing, Isaac does. “Lie. Such a lie I’m surprised your heart didn’t explode.”

“Since when did you develop a superiority complex about getting laid? And it’s been a while since Quentin anyway, so-

“That’s not what this is about,” Scott complains.

“True.”

“Shut up,” Scott snaps, eyes flashing for just a second. Which means this is serious, whatever this is. Which means that Stiles has to get his stupid fucking dysfunctional brain to engage and figure out what the deal is. Where’s the colour coded string when you need it? Dansk might be a useless asshole when it comes to prescribing, but that organisational tip has worked for Stiles since grade six and his first real essay project.

“So you don’t want me to dagaz all of a sudden. You want me to just jerk off until the end of time?”

“I think you should have sex with whatever people you want.”

Isaac makes a face. “That’s sort of a lie, sort of true. I dunno. It’s complicated.”

“I think you should be happy.”

“Definitely true.”

Scott flashes his eyes again. “One more time and I’ll throw you against the wall, I swear to god.”

“Look. I don’t understand and I can’t think today. It’s not fair trying to make me guess your weird stupid motivations today when I don’t have any IR.” God, his fucking kingdom for IR. Maybe if Isaac is right and later in the summer they have to rescue Erica and Boyd, afterwards Erica will repay him by breaking into Dansk’s office. He’s got those sample bottles and it wouldn’t even be a chore for Erica. She likes being menacing equal to or greater than being sexy.

“Fine. I guess I just wish you wanted that with me.”

What the double hell? Was Scott not listening before? “Dude. I literally just suggested hooking up with you two.”

“No. Just me.”

Stiles stretches out his leg again, this time so he can rub his foot on Scott. His toes are double jointed, it’s pretty early to curl them around the bulge beneath Scott’s zipper. Scott doesn’t have a foot fetish, but it’s an action statement of general intent, so it’s fine. “Okay, cool. Isaac goes home, we dagaz, everyone is happy. Except maybe Isaac, because he has to go back to No Bed Derek. Isaac, you can break in and use my bed if you want, just don’t shatter any windows to do it. That’s rude. Stealth, not strength.”

“I don’t mean just dagazing. I want to be with you.”

“I _knew_ you two were naudizfriends!”

“No, we’re not.” Stiles snaps. Fuck, this is too much. How is he supposed to think about this when he can’t even make it through a hilariously terrible fanvid set to Meatloaf? Fuck them both for making this happen now when he’s so incredibly not equipped to deal.

No. Seriously. Fuck this. Just like that Stiles is drawing his leg back from Scott, swivelling so he can step over Isaac, not on him.

He’s halfway to the door when Isaac speaks up. “Come on. You can’t just leave him hanging mid-proposal.”

“Eat shit Lahey,” Stoles says viciously. “Do you know how often I’ve put your guys basically endless bullshit in front of my own mental health? If it was written on a check someone would be standing slackjawed saying ‘look at those zeros. That’s _how_ many?’ So right now I’m going to do what my counsellor would tell me to do. I’m putting my own needs first. We’ll talk when I have more spoons.”

“Spoons?” he hears Scott asks as he exits. Stiles almost turns around, but no. It’s not his job to explain internet theories to Scott, not today.

***

Twenty minutes after Stiles gets home he lets out a wordless cry of annoyance. His body has utterly betrayed him. As mentally spun up as he is about this, his dick doesn’t give a shit. His dick is thinking about Scott’s abs, Scott’s ass, and how they could be his.

With lack of a better option Stiles pushes his shorts halfway down his legs and jerks off. Not thinking about Scott is a losing battle. Scott’s _ass_ and fuck is he a good kisser. He’s got kind of a mouth kink, Stiles knows, and he also knows it’s not just about him, because he’s seen the way Scott makes out with Allison and Quentin. If Scott were in bed with him, Stiles would probably be blowing him, because that’s what gets Scott off the hardest. His lips would be stretched wide around Scott’s dick, his own drool mixing with precome on his tongue. Scott’s hand would be on his neck, steadying him without force, and Stiles would be good and not rut against the bed because if he just waited, Scott would get him off in his own favourite way; some thick fast fingering.

The thoughts spur him to orgasm. For a minute Stiles can’t help but feel good, even laying in gross sweat stained sheets, splattered with rapidly cooling jizz. Dopamine is the best. 

Then the feeling washes away with the flood of logic. Beach erosion ain’t got nothin’ on him. Just because Scott is hot doesn’t mean Stiles should say yes to what he wants, even if guarantees tons of actual sex. It’s not like he wasn’t previously aware of Scott’s hotness. All the reasons that he had in Scott’s room to say ‘we’ll talk later’ are still valid.

***

Stiles hears a werewolf scale the wall. He’s not deaf and werewolves aren’t always as stealthy as they think. He knows it’s coming and yet he doesn’t throw down a handful of mountain ash just in time. Consider him a generous soul. That or he plans on off-loading on whichever of the two it is. Scott or Isaac, either will have asked for it, not giving Stiles the required space.

Except in through the window comes Derek. 

The Alpha doesn’t waste any time, just says his piece. “Isaac said you made Scott cry.”

Oh, the many places Stiles could start. Or fuck it, he could just say it all. “I’m sure he’s exaggerating. Scott isn’t really the crying type. Also why would Isaac tell _you_? I mean Ms McCall, sure, but you? Since when do you care about anyone’s feelings, including your own? I know your amygdala has basically atrophied from lack of use. Since when do you care about Scott’s feelings? Especially since the whole lack of consent vibe in the warehouse, because surely that didn’t, you know, endear him to you?”

“Are you done?”

Stiles snorts. _Done_? Yeah right. “No. Since when you do care about my feelings? You’ve said a dozen times that I’m not Pack. And that was before Scott defected, and I’m obviously on his side.”

Derek crosses his arms. His muscles are such that they can be seen through the long sleeves. It would be intimidating, if Stiles wasn’t so over being cowed by the supernatural. Maybe he’ll hit Derek with Roscoe too, if it comes to it. “Are you still?”

“Just because he’s trying to make things weird doesn’t mean I’m ever not on his side when it comes to hitting lizard demons with cars, okay.” Like he’d ever abandon Scott.

“Everyone knows before Argent and Quentin you dagazed. You just said you’re loyal. What’s the problem?”

Stiles still highly doubts that Derek cares, but might as well vent. “Circumstances have taught me that you need to be able to walk away from your naudiz.” At Derek’s blank but somehow still questioning stare Stiles clarifies ‘circumstances’. “My parents. Scott’s parents. Lydia’s parents. Isaac’s parents. Greenberg’s naudiz. Finstock’s naudiz and wunjo.”

Derek already knows the stories of some, wouldn’t care about the others. Of course, because he’s a shit, he focuses on the part Stiles would least like to discuss. Probably heard his heart do something funny and decided to pick at it. “Your parents? I thought your moms were dead.”

“You’ve always lived here. You’ve probably already heard the story and just forgot.” Stiles would be surprised if anyone didn’t know nine years ago. Shit, that’s how he made friends with Harley; one of her grannies had Alzheimers and she wanted to know if Stiles’ loved one forgot his name too. Not quite, but the lack of beating around the bush made the friendship stick. “When I was eight my opalamom started showing signs of this neurodegenerative disease. It’s bad.” 

Stiles won’t detail the bad. He can’t say _it made her mean and impulsive and drop to a sociopath’s level of empathy, but none of that compared to being part of the two percent that saw hallucinations_. Strangers don’t need to know that. Derek might not consider himself a stranger, but seeing as nearly everything Stiles knows about Derek’s life he learned from files of Dad’s, Stiles doesn’t figure them for close sharing buddies.

“Once she passed my raidomom told the us truth. My opalamom knew she was gonna die. They both did. They’d met on a chat site for FTD victims. They were each other’s naudizes. But I think my dad was less upset about that then he was that FTD’s semi-hereditary and they never said anything before getting pregnant.”

Derek at least doesn’t ask if he has it, if he’s had the genetic test yet. So fucking many people think they can just ask. Like it’s no big deal. Derek is the very last person Stiles would have guessed for tact, but the proof is in the silence of his bedroom.

“So yeah. Naudizes can be shitty. Surprise, the world’s not puppies and rainbows. Scott’s someone I can’t walk away from. A brand new title and the occasional romantic gift isn’t worth the chance of everything else.”

“My naudiz died,” is somehow the response that makes sense to Derek.

“Before or after your whole family?” God, how is he such a sad sack? Stiles would accuse him of one upmanship of a sad and depressing variety, but Derek’s hardly Jackson. Derek doesn’t care about impressing people. He’s the Alpha, he already owns everyone that he might need the attention of. Except Scott, of course.

Derek stares him down. Stiles is half convinced there’s a special stare just for him, one that means stop or I will drag you to the nearest car and break into it just to smack your head against a steering wheel.

“Walking away isn’t the important part,” he says finally.

Gravitas doesn’t mean he’s right, though. “It is, didn’t you just hear me?”

“All those people rebuilt themselves.”

“You’re seriously paraphrasing ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all’? What’s next, ‘three houses all alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we set our scene’?”

Another blank stare. Stiles shifts in the computer chair and it swivels half a rotation. No matter. His core still knows Derek is glaring, even if he can’t see it beyond his periphery.

“You realise pulling a Frigga isn’t going to automatically make him your Pack, right? He might be grateful but I don’t think he’ll be that grateful.”

“Stop being a jackass.”

“Why?”Stiles demands, never one to make other people’s lives easy. “Jackson moved, someone’s gotta fill the niche. Don’t you know biology? If an ecological niche is left empty the entire system can collapse.”

“Stiles. Just think.”

And then Derek is gone, because abruptly diving through windows is apparently something advice fairies do these days. Frustrating, because Stiles would have pointed out the reason he left Scott to wail and gnash as rumoured was to think. So Derek’s terse and thematically depressing advice can suck it, frankly.

***

It’s not quite crisis in reverse this time. Stiles isn’t crashed out on the couch beside Ms McCall, moaning as everyone side-eyes him. Yes, she let him in and yes she called up the stairs, but there’s no way Scott nearly fell out of his broken down old spinny chair. Werewolf hearing probably let him know before Stiles was parked. And she’s not reclining with him and staring the way Dad did Scott, last romantic upheaval. She muttered something about groceries and practically sprinted out the back door as Scott thumped down the stairs.

So now Stiles is alone on the comfortably broken in chesterfield, looking up at Scott, who’s got crossed arms and the fakest smile ever. “What video game do you want to play?”

“Nope. Not doing the pretending it didn’t happen thing.” It’s stupid and Stiles refuses, straight up.

Scott sits down with him on the sand coloured couch. There is an uncomfortable middle cushion between them that feels like a chasm. “Might be easier.”

“Yeah, if I didn’t know you’d be all depressed behind my back, and fakey smiles in front of it. Plus Isaac told Derek I made you cry so other people are invested in this.”

Stiles is half expecting an outburst of the _I did not!_ kind. What he gets is Scott scowling. “Fuckin’ Isaac.”

When it becomes clear that Scott isn’t going to contribute anything more than cursing Isaac’s very soul, Stiles fiddles with the lowest button of his plaid overshirt and figures out at least a bit of what he wants to say. “I guess this is what I want you to explain to me. We already dagaz. We already love each other. We already would die for other and have legit gotten injured for the other. So what changes?”

“The _word_ ” Scott volleys, like it’s the biggest thing in the world. “I’d be able to call you-”

“Wunjo, I know.”

“Naudiz, actually.”

Stiles is going to have to call bullshit. “But Allison-”

Scott shrugs. “You were right.” 

Stiles defaults to humor. He can’t help it. “I was? Say that again. No one ever says that, say it again.”

“I’m not saying I don’t want to try again when she gets back. But it could be _us_ trying.”

Allison isn’t the first person to come to mind when Stiles thinks wunjo. For years that place has been held by a vague composite of Lydia Martin’s future naudiz. Maybe female, or male, even andro or genderqueer, as long as they show that identity in their style perfectly. Maybe black, maybe asian, or white or latino, as long as their skin is clear and flawless. Tall or short, curvy or washboard abs, curly or wavy or straight hair, Stiles has imagined a hundred thousand attributes. He’s cycled through every student and teacher he’s ever set eyes on, including the lacrosse team’s rivals. As long as she can find perfection in that one person, maybe they’ll both accept the complete lack of it in him. It’s all been very abstract, thus far. Certain, Stiles isn’t the kind of guy that doesn’t trust in his plans, but ill-defined. Allison is very very real.

“It’s not like half the school didn’t think she and Quentin were dumping you for me. Lets give them even more drama to discuss.”

“You want to...You _want_ to?” The repeated words come with a dawning on Scott’s face, an expression so bright it could blind the sun.

“Date?”

“Be my naudiz?”

“I’m not gonna say I don’t find the idea of my naudiz being my actual Ask-Embla perfection unsettling. Not being able to walk away is scary. It’s hard to see the devastation left after a perfect naudiz shreds at the seams. But a little birdie, who’d hate being called a little birdie, he told me you don’t always get time to reflect and change your decisions. If you want something, sitting around and weighing the pros and cons is a bad idea. Or at least that was implied, but Derek is bad at talking.” Stiles decides it’s time for a blatant change in topic. “So down with overthinking and up with sexing up naudizes!”

The nice thing about having a teenage naudiz with the same motivations he does is that that works. In one sentence it goes from difficult conversation about feelings to dagaz time. Except, shit. No. It’s not. Dagazing is what he and Scott used to do, like sex except meaningless and between people not dating. Now that Scott is Stiles’ naudiz this is just normal sex.

The revelation doesn’t make him fall down the stairs, but it does make him take them two at a time. Scott’s room is down the hall, and then bam. Scott is stripping with the exact amount of enthusiasm Stiles would want to see. Stiles follows suit, flinging clothes everywhere because it’s not like he’ll need to gather them in a hurry and exit.

Scott tugs on his arm and pulls him to the bed. Within seconds Scott has them aligned. Dick to dick, because everyone likes a little friction. Stomach to stomach because none of this gentlemanly holding weight off the bottom body, Stiles can take it. And mouth to mouth, which might be the most important part for Scott. Stiles parts his lips and hangs on for the ride.

Even when Scott breaks away to breathe and move downward to lick Stiles’ collarbone Stiles keeps his mouth open. Hemmed in by Scott, he wants to give his naudiz every part of himself. Every cranny and nook and expanse of him is Scott’s, and that means offering his mouth for him to kiss, or fuck. 

Scott does neither. He puts a finger on Stiles’ tongue. He pushes down, like a doctor’s tongue depressor, like he’s trying to trigger a gag reflex. Stiles is human; he feels it, for a moment. But he doesn’t let his palate win. He keeps his mouth open, and Scott rewards him by biting his nipple just hard enough to make the muscles in Stiles’ thighs jump. Scott slides in a second finger. In time, a third. Stiles knows he’s drooling all down his chin but doesn’t feel embarrassed. How can he, with that look in Scott’s eyes? He’d drool a river if that’s what Scott wanted from him. 

Stiles brain goes a little haywire when Scott pushes his hand between the bed and Stiles. There are fingers now, resting curved around his cheek and into his crack. One fingertip is even against his asshole. Logically Stiles knows it’s not going inside him; the digits are dry and the lube is in the desk drawer and the possibility of them separating now is slim to none. But fantasy has nothing to do with reality, and so the fingers do what Stiles’ open gagged mouth does; it kicks it up a notch.

It all gets to be too much. There’s no sudden change in technique that makes Stiles orgasm hit like a punch to the throat. It’s all just a build up of sensation, like the foam on boiling potatoes pushing over the side of the pot. Stiles arches up, Scott on him in every direction never letting go, and comes.

When it’s over Stiles collapsed and sweating into Scott’s sheets, Scott draws back a little. Not further than arm’s length, but enough to look at his whole face, not just his lips. He even removes his sticky wet fingers.

“Can I?”

Stiles flaps his hand rather than tell Scott yeah duh obviously he can do whatever he wants, go for it. He’s riding too high on dopamine to ramble quite yet. 

Scott takes the blanket permission for what it is. He crawls up the bed until his knees are tucked in Stiles’ armpits and jerks himself to a finish. His spunk falls across Stiles’ lips and chin and Stiles has to chuckle, because of course. He leaves his mouth open a little in case Scott wants a tongue shot and only closes it when Scott shuffles again to be beside him. They’re not spooning, thus avoiding awkward _who’s the bigger_ arguments. They’re just close, side to side, hip to hip, Scott’s leg thrown over his thigh.

Stiles stays quiet until his brain comes online. And it does with a vengeance, because that’s just how his body works. He’s been like this seventeen years, and occasional begging for immediate release pills aside, he generally just rolls with it. Lucky for him, Scott is good at listening.

“So now that we’re all Cinderella and Archduke and Prince, we need to fix Isaac.” Stiles owes the guy for being matchmaker. And maybe he’ll buy Derek a pie or something, but mostly the props go to Isaac for being ballsy enough to complain about hurt feelings to Derek, King of Stoic.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve his own happy ending,” Scott starts. He sound half distracted, Stiles wonders if that’s due to Scott’s own hormone surge, or if he’s just trying to figure out who gets what fairytale role. “I just don’t see how. Isaac wants Erica and Boyd, not anyone new. But he and Derek have been looking all summer.”

“Yeah, but they don’t have our style. Brainstorm with me.”

It only comes as a little bit of a surprise when Scott twists his arm awkwardly to grab the oddly bulging paperback he has to read for English summer school and opens it to reveal a half inch thick stack of Post Its stuck on the inner cover. If Stiles has told Scott once he’s told him a million times that Post Its are like the Holy Grail of organising. Now that he’s semi-serious about his grades, he cares more about organising his thoughts. A pen comes next, and Stiles figures he should clarify what he’s looking for with _brainstorm_.

“So, I’m looking for the most ridiculous shit only. Like you know how back on the nineteen sixties version of Batman, he and Robin and Thickney would find themselves in absurd positions, like the time they got trapped inside a giant book in the middle of the road? That. Like stuff Derek would never stoop so low as to think about.”

“Okay?” Scott laughs and adjusts his hooked leg for a bit more comfort, but doesn’t remove it.

“I’ll start us off. Literally swimming with the fishes. They’ve been hooked up to constant oxygen tanks and they’re miles underwater.” Werewolf healing could fix the way their skin would start to dissolve, sort of like that one episode of Angel.

“You can evade scent if you’re an Alpha. Maybe the Alpha Pack made them kill their enemy Alphas to boost them.”

Stiles would point out the flaws in that plan -it’s unlikely that Boyd and Erica wouldn’t immediately attempt to contact them, since turning Alpha doesn’t mean instant brainwash- but it’s not like his concrete shoes concept is any better. That’s the point right now. Nothing is off the table. Stiles will even willingly write down abducted by aliens if Scott says it.

Struck with absurd inspiration Scott takes a second turn. “Maybe they’re stuck in a mountain ash flooring Ikea example floor.”

Stiles cackles imagining Erica shouting about Nyvoll dressers but writes it on a Post It.

“What if they’ve joined a cult?” he says aloud, writing the words down at the same time.

“What if they’re hostages in the world’s longest stand off?”

“Domestic or bank robbery?” Stiles asks for clarification’s sake.

“I dunno. Both, I guess.”

Suburban hostage, bank hostage gets two Post Its.

Later, when they have dozens of completely ridiculous ideas that Derek would kick them out a window for suggesting, Stiles has full intentions of going through the Post Its and double checking that every inch of the concept is wrong. Maybe they’ll find something useful, if not actualfax Boyd and Erica. Stiles is still fifty-fifty about whether or not they just took off, no Alphas necessary. But if they did it was probably because they were terrified of Gerard, not because they wanted to leave the Pack. Which means that with the motherfucker dead, they can come home. Hopefully. If Stiles can get Isaac the happily ever after that the curly haired boy indirectly gave him and Scott, Stiles will consider it the cherry on top.


End file.
